When you have a character with glasses it's easy to come to the idea of those glasses breaking and needing repair by someone. I talked someone else into writing a story with the same pairing because we talk on tumblr all the time and it's a good idea and a cute pairing. So this is smoking-tulips story: www . fanfiction . net/s/ 7716423/1/ Broken_Glass So no, neither of us stole the idea from the other. She published hers first because she's on top of things. I however am not. I'm a bad Ekkorn, easily distracted.


He'd say he was blind as a bat, but at least bats had sonar. Two little pops and two loud clatters and his day was over.

He calmly put down the knife he was cutting with. He knew not to even bother trying to cook at this point, he tried to feel around for the lenses, they couldn't have gotten far...

His hand kept touching carrots and potatoes and he stops trying to feel for them. He knows the kitchen well enough to find the nearest chair, he sits and calmly waits. It was his unfortunate lot in life, to need glasses, his sight had lasted for so long and so few of their kind ever needed them. He knew not to try to find anything that wasn't very close, the phone was out of question as both his cell phone and his land-line were located in the living room. He removes the empty frames and he knows that the screws went.

He'd need a new pair, the screws were stripped and wouldn't hold. He hadn't had a pair in this style in a long time, he'd forgotten about their nasty habit of popping. He was irritated at both himself and the frame. He rubs his forehead in an attempt to keep it from creasing.

He keeps his eyes closed, in truth it doesn't matter. Without his glasses everything is blurry, like a spotted abstract painting left in the rain. He can guess what things are, but so much is now foreign. Any writing is now smudged, patterns run into each other, his own hands appear to have become blobs.

Before his sight went, he would have been fine. He'd never have to worry about falling asleep in his glasses, scratches and smudges or that annoying way Denmark would take them and do a imitation of him. Contacts never felt right, never reacted right. His eyes rejected them, he was human enough to need them but not human enough to use them. He used to be fine, normal, able to run into battle without a worry about his sight being stolen so easily. He'd delayed getting them in the first place, unwilling to admit there was a problem. Truth be told the technology and understanding was limited in the beginning, so even with lenses he didn't see everything perfectly but he'd been able to function much better.

And now he was here, sitting in his kitchen, waiting.

He was lucky he was at peace at the moment. He cracked a small grin. If this where the older days and this happened he would have had a 80/20 chance a angry Dane would have came through his door wanting something insane and a fight.

Was it his imagination or was his door opening?

No. Impossible...oh! Of course, he felt silly for even thinking that it would be a raging enemy.

Norway didn't start talking until he got to the kitchen and this was only because Berwald was sitting down at the table and there was a mess at the cutting board instead of the neatness the swede usually had in the kitchen. Everything set off alarms.

"What happened here?"

Now Berwald couldn't be sure, exactly what was happening, he could tell there was movement and he tensed a little trying to follow Erik's movements.

"My glasses broke."

The blur that he had been following around stopped and possibly turned around in spot.

"Did they?"

"Should be somewhere in the carrots..." Not his proudest moment, not his best moment. No, he was never getting this style of frame again. Ever.

The tap ran for a few seconds and the squeaking sound of the glass getting dried on a cloth.

Then a drawer was opened and closed with the contents shifting.

He hated this. Just sitting here, useless.

A chair was moved next to his, the empty frames taken from his hand.

A little bit of Norwegian cursing and then a cool hand turning his head. He was facing a blur of pale features and dark eyes. The basic color components of Erik's face. A basic elemental understanding. The blur moved closer, it stopped moving but was very much close to his own face.

Then he felt the cool fingers push up the frames, the half warm and half cold metal touching his face. Erik's fingers touched along the side of his face and his ears gently placing the fixed frames back home.

It was with a sudden shift that the blur of paleness and dark orbs before him turned into the face of a pale man with eyes that captured the majesty of the night and the wonder of the unknown. He took a small gasp of breath, this close, he could get lost in those eyes. A small look of confusion crossed Erik's face then a small smile.

"What was that for?"

He didn't want to admit it, but their faces were so close, Erik had let his hands rest on either side of his head a closeness he didn't mind, this space he would gladly share.

"Sometimes you leave me breathless."

Of all the things he's seen in his life, of nature's splendor and mankind's attempts to recreate it, nothing compared to the look on Erik's face in that moment.

It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.